Oregon comes to town this week with something to prove. The Ducks have been through a tumultuous season. That continued last week, when 19-year-old Damyean Dotson sat out the Washington State game after being cited for using a fake ID in a bar. He will play against UCLA on Thursday. Earlier this season, guard Dominic Artis and forward Ben Carter were suspended nine games for selling team apparel that had been provided by the university. Oregon started the season 12-0 and was ranked 10 th at the start of Pac-12 play.

Your editorial "The Logger's Ax: No Wild Swings" (June 22) was on the mark in condemning the salvage logging exemptions approved by the 104th Congress. What was missed in this hard-hitting editorial is the searing hypocrisy behind this GOP effort to establish logging without laws on the national forests. On the one hand, you have the new majority in Congress seeking greatly expanded salvage logging under the guise of improving "forest health" and reducing the risk of wildfire. The fact is that salvage logging has little to do with restoring a forest's ecological integrity.

MIAMI - Sometimes the Lakers disintegrate horribly and lose by 36 to the Clippers. Sometimes they fall in overtime to Chicago by allowing a ridiculously easy inbounds play with 0.9 seconds left. Occasionally, though, they surprise you, winning games against those very same Clippers and Houston earlier this season. Sad but true, their surprises are now measured by close losses against superior teams. Such was Thursday, a 109-102 defeat Thursday against the obviously better Miami Heat even though Dwyane Wade sat out because of chronic knee soreness.

Kyle Orton took off the glove last week and had his best game as quarterback of the Denver Broncos. Tonight, the San Diego Chargers hope to take off the gloves and save their season. Orton's glove is real, worn to protect a cut on his index figure. Playing without it last Sunday, he threw for 330 yards and two touchdowns in a 20-17 overtime victory against New England. The Chargers' gloves are figurative, whatever it's been that has held them back in their lackluster 2-2 start, one that prompted even General Manager A.J. Smith to call the team "soft."

When the landmark Long Beach bookstore Acres of Books closed its doors in 2008 to make way for a city redevelopment project, a big question remained: what to do with its acres of bookshelves? The decision was made to let them live on in a way, even after the bookstore was long gone. This summer, workers are using hammers to knock down and harvest an estimated 6-1/2 miles of wooden shelving. Most of the 1930s-era building will be demolished this fall to make way for an art center.

The Navy unloaded fuel, water and personnel from a $1-billion guided-missile cruiser grounded off Honolulu so tugboats and a salvage ship could try today to free it from a rock and sand shoal. The Port Royal ran aground Thursday evening. No one was injured and no oil or other contaminants have leaked, said representatives of the Navy, Coast Guard and state. A lighter cruiser, combined with peak high tide and an oceangoing tug, some smaller harbor tugs and a salvage ship are expected to do the trick when a third effort is made to free the ship.

India's only satellite orbiting the moon came close to failure after overheating, but scientists improvised to save it and have reportedly achieved more than 90% of the mission's objectives. Scientists were able to salvage the satellite and resume normal operations by activating the satellite's gyroscope, the Indian Space Research Organization's chief G. Madhavan Nair said.

More than 160 homeless veterans were assisted during Stand Down '98. A gracious thank you to all our corporate sponsors, to Mr. and Mrs. Tom Gatto who donated hours at sewing machines to enable us to salvage more than 200 shirts, to our financial angels, Dr. and Mrs, Foster Taft, and to all the volunteers and helpers. BILL SCHMIDT Co-Chair Stand Down '98

Certainly the fact that an anti-abortionist has, herself, had an abortion is newsworthy, but I do not feel Susan McMillan deserved what amounts to nearly a full page of PR to help salvage her position. I don't care that she feels "I'm loved by no one and hated by everyone." Am I supposed to feel sorry for her? She has her opinions, and she has to take the flak for them. Does her disclosure make her a hypocrite? No. Does it make her right? No. JAMES PHILIP COX, Pasadena

The U.S. Forest Service is proposing an extensive salvage operation to log dead trees on about 46 square miles of timberland charred in last year's massive Rim fire in the Sierra Nevada. The project would be one of the largest federal salvage efforts in California in years. If approved, it could yield more lumber than the combined annual output of all the national forests in the state. But it is already triggering a fight by some environmentalists who argue that the post-fire logging would destroy valuable habitat for rare birds and other species that thrive in blackened forests.

The Stanislaus National Forest was a thickly forested wonderland of streams, wildlife and campgrounds until last summer's Rim fire - started by a hunter's illegal campfire - scorched more than 250,000 acres of it and the adjacent Yosemite National Park. To many people, it's a tragic sight now. What was once dense greenery is now scarred, gray and empty looking. But nature takes the long view. From its perspective, fire is about rejuvenation. It reinvigorates the soil and stimulates the growth of a greater variety of healthy new plants.

WASHINGTON - Harold Rhode still recalls the euphoria he felt a decade ago after finding thousands of dripping, moldy artifacts of Iraq's once-vibrant Jewish community in the flooded basement of Saddam Hussein's intelligence service headquarters in Baghdad. "How do you describe it? An enormous elation, a deep connection, but also shock: Why would this be here?" says the 64-year-old former Pentagon official, an Orthodox Jew who discovered the purloined archive in the bombed-out building days after he arrived in the Iraqi capital with the U.S. invasion force in the spring of 2003.

For those looking for gifts with a little urban edge, we take our Handmade Holidays series to the studio of Meyghan Hill in downtown Los Angeles. That's where Hill welds her Salvaged Steel & Stenciled planters, sold as plain vessels or with personalized graphics. Each planter measures 12 inches wide, 12 inches deep and 8 inches high. Price: $125. Hill sells her various designs on her own studio site as well as through the Angelo:Home store downtown. For those who can spend a bit more, check out her Fallon Salvaged Steel Bound bookend, $275, composed of stair-stepped marble sheets wrangled into brackets that Hill welds herself.

BUCKHORN MEADOWS, Calif. - Calls for massive salvage logging, restoration and reforestation projects in the 257,000 acres of public wilderness scarred by the Rim fire have ignited controversy over how to proceed with the largest recovery effort undertaken in the Sierra Nevada. "We're hoping to negotiate our way through this, but we need the infrastructure and personnel," said Jerry Snyder, a spokesman for the Stanislaus National Forest. "This effort will be huge, so we'll also need additional help from Washington.

GIGLIO, Italy - This summer, tourists on the Tuscan island of Giglio have been heading for the pretty palm-lined beach at the port, soaking up the sun and swimming out to a line of buoys. Beyond is the capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia, sitting in shallow water where passengers were sucked to their deaths by whirlpools created as the giant vessel lurched onto its side. Nineteen months after the 950-foot-long ship slammed into rocks off this Mediterranean island and came to a precarious rest on two granite outcrops, the captain, Francesco Schettino, is on trial on charges of manslaughter in the deaths of 32 people who never made it ashore on the night of Jan. 13, 2012.

The feeling of hopelessness from the tragedy of the Central Library fire can be assuaged by several things: --The wonderful work of the Los Angeles Fire Department--the finest in the world--which aided in the saving of 80% of the library's collection. --The librarians--from Central Library and from the branches--who worked around the clock in the salvage effort. --The 1,500 volunteers who came out and showed that they care about the records of a civilization. --And, the media, including The Times, who kept the public aware of events as they unfolded.

One day short of the 44th anniversary of Apollo 11's lunar landing, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos announced that a rocket engine fished out of the Atlantic Ocean by an expedition he was leading had been part of the historic mission. NASA and Bezos confirmed Friday that debris recovered in March was one of the F-1 engines from the Saturn V rocket that had propelled Apollo 11 toward the moon. "Forty-four years ago tomorrow Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, and now we have recovered a critical technological marvel that made it all possible," Bezos wrote on his blog.

OKLAHOMA CITY - She had to pause several times. She needed to collect herself. But then Amy Simpson opened up and memories of a harrowing day poured out. "In God's name, go away!" Simpson said she yelled as Monday's tornado approached Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., where she is principal. "Go away. " Moments later, the tornado had gone. But it only needed moments to level her campus and take the lives of seven students. They were 8 and 9 years old. As she stood before a bank of cameras at a Friday news conference held in the auditorium of another elementary school, Simpson recalled the routine but satisfying slices of her day, the way her job and her school had been before the tornado: Students singing and reciting the school motto during the weekly "Rise and Shine" meeting.